The Girl Next Door

Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets; well-tended lawns; and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths.

A Simple Plan

Hank Mitchell thought he lived an ordinary, ordered life. But on one chilly afternoon, Hank, his brother Jacob, and Jacob's unsavory pal Lou, make a discovery that offers a chance for a life filled with riches beyond their wildest dreams. And in a fateful moment, Hank lays a plan to claim that life....and the horrific crumbling of his ordered world begins.

The Elementals

After a bizarre and disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama's Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses loom over the shimmering beach. Two of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in wait.

The Troop

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier.

Hell House

For over 20 years, Belasco House has stood empty. Regarded as the Mt. Everest of haunted houses, its shadowed walls have witnessed scenes of unimaginable horror and depravity. All previous attempts to probe its mysteries have ended in murder, suicide, or insanity.

But now, a new investigation has been launched, bringing four strangers to Belasco House in search of the ultimate secrets of life and death. A wealthy publisher, brooding over his impending death, has paid a physicist and two mediums to establish the facts of life after death once and for all. For one night, they will investigate the Belasco House and learn exactly why the townsfolk refer to it as the Hell House.

Ghost Story

For four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past - and get away with murder. Peter Straub's classic best seller is a work of "superb horror" (Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time - and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.

The Deep

A strange plague called the "Gets" is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget - small things at first, like where they left their keys... then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily - and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as "ambrosia" has been discovered - a universal healer, from initial reports.

Hex

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's beds for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened, or the consequences will be too terrible to bear.

Disappearance at Devil's Rock: A Novel

Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: Her 13-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park. The search isn't yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy's disappearance. They feel helpless and alone, and their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: The local and state police have uncovered no leads.

Ghost Road Blues: The Pine Deep Trilogy, Book 1

The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country’s largest Halloween celebration in what is now called “The Spookiest Town in America.”

Burnt Offerings: Valancourt 20th Century Classics

Ben and Marian Rolfe are desperate to escape a stifling summer in their tiny Brooklyn apartment, so when they get the chance to rent a mansion in upstate New York for the entire summer for only $900, it's an offer that's too good to refuse. There's only one catch: behind a strange and intricately carved door in a distant wing of the house lives elderly Mrs. Allardyce, and the Rolfes will be responsible for preparing her meals. But Mrs. Allardyce never seems to emerge from her room, and it soon becomes clear that something weird and terrifying is happening in the house.

The Books of Blood, Volume 1

Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist. This first volume contains the short stories : "The Book of Blood," "The Midnight Meat Train," "The Yattering and Jack," "Sex, Death, and Starshine," and "In the Hills, the Cities,"

Summer of Night

It’s the summer of 1960 and in the small town of Elm Haven, Illinois, five twelve-year-old boys are forging the powerful bonds that a lifetime of change will not break. From sunset bike rides to shaded hiding places in the woods, the boys’ days are marked by all of the secrets and silences of an idyllic childhood. But amid the sun-drenched cornfields, their loyalty will be pitilessly tested.

The Eaton

Spanning over 100 years of mid-Michigan history, The Eaton tells the story of Sam Spicer, a young entrepreneur who purchases the dilapidated Michigan Central Railroad Depot in Eaton Rapids with the dream of opening a hot new martini bar. But when he and his friends discover an abandoned underground hotel directly beneath the property, they must discover what happened to the original guests—before their own time runs out.

The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition

Four decades after it first shook the nation, then the world, William Peter Blatty's thrilling masterwork of faith and demonic possession returns in an even more powerful form. Raw and profane, shocking and blood-chilling, it remains a modern parable of good and evil and perhaps the most terrifying novel ever written.

Cold Moon over Babylon: Valancourt 20th Century Classics

Welcome to Babylon, a typical sleepy Alabama small town, where years earlier the Larkin family suffered a terrible tragedy. Now they are about to endure another: 14-year-old Margaret Larkin will be robbed of her innocence and her life by a killer who is beyond the reach of the law. But something strange is happening in Babylon: traffic lights flash an eerie blue, a ghostly hand slithers from the drain of a kitchen sink, graves erupt from the local cemetery in an implacable march of terror.

The Fireman: A Novel

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it's Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies - before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe.

Heart-Shaped Box

Judas Coyne is a collector of the macabre. But nothing he possesses is as unlikely or as dreadful as his latest discovery, a thing so terrible-strange, Jude can't help but reach for his wallet. For a thousand dollars, Jude will become the proud owner of a dead man's suit, said to be haunted by a restless spirit. But what UPS delivers to his door in a black heart-shaped box is no imaginary or metaphorical ghost. It's the real thing.

The Haunting of Hill House

Four seekers have come to the ugly, abandoned old mansion: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of the psychic phenomenon called haunting; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a lonely, homeless girl well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the adventurous future heir of Hill House.

Song of Kali

Blood will curdle in Calcutta. In the most crime-ridden city, nightmares become real and evil is defined by frightening occurrences. When an American family finds themselves encircled by the terrors of this land, lurid events befall them and life takes on a new meaning - death. Winner of the World Fantasy Award, Song of Kali will chill the blood and frighten even the most jaded of horror fans.

Carrion Comfort

The Past...Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face-to-face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazis themselves...

Breeds, Book 1

In a near-deserted coastal village, odd things are happening. Strangers are asking questions about the town's recluse. A local hunter discovers naked footprints in the snow. The stray dog population has ceased to exist. And with winter's most powerful weapon bearing down, things are about to become much, much worse. A werewolf book. Not a romance. Not at all.

A Head Full of Ghosts

The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when 14-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession.

The Dark Half

Thad Beaumont would like to say he is innocent. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the twisted imagination that produced his best-selling novels. He'd like to say he has nothing to do with the series of monstrous murders that keep coming closer to his home. But how can Thad deny the ultimate embodiment of evil that goes by the name he gave it - and signs its crimes with Thad's bloody fingerprints?

Publisher's Summary

Eerie, terrifying, and unputdownable, The Ruins is Scott Smith's first novel since his acclaimed debut A Simple Plan earned rave reviews and stormed best seller lists.

The Ruins follows two American couples enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico. On an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of one of their group, the young German who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig.

This is what happens from the moment the searchers, moving into the wild interior, begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific "other" among them.

What the Critics Say

"A stunning horror thriller." (Publishers Weekly "The book of the summer....Smith intends to scare the bejabbers out of you, and succeeds." (Stephen King) "If you love ABC's Lost and the novels of King and Thomas Harris, you'll love this book." (USA Today)

If you want to throw your money away buy this book, otherwise keep looking. The names misleading-I thought the book would be fun from the discription but found the only thing in ruin was my time. Boring, drawn out and inane. I drive truck for a living and listen to alot of books on tape and this was one of the worst I have listened to. No ruined citys or temples, no ghosts demons or even monsters. I wont give away the storyline but buy this at your own risk.

This book is not only boring, but the author couldn't even come up with an out once he got his characters into deep dodo. I listened to the first 8 hours and then scanned the rest. The weakest audible book I've come across in 4 yeaers of listening to audible.com and probably the weakest in nearly 20 years of listening to novels on audio.

This was the worst book I have ever downloaded. It had such promise - got off to a great start. I kept on listening to the very end, hoping that something might happen. No such luck! Don't waste your time.

Wow was this a long drawn out piece of ________. I only gave it 1 star becuase that is the minimum, it deserves half a star.

It could be a good short story, but 14 hours? This was not thrilling, most of it was obvious. Nothing really happened. I don't want to go into any spoilers, but they spent hours explaining the smallest details. And ultimately the book went nowhere.

I can't quite decide what the worst part of this book is - the uninteresting one-dimensional characters or their endless internal dialogue - the lack of suspense or the idiotic plot. Or maybe it was the endless repetition of certain phrases, the almost word-for-word descriptions, and the maddening sameness of each chararacter's separate musings. I was also disappointed that there was nothing much at all about ancient Mayan culture or archeological sites despite the setting of the story. The reader did a good job without anything to work with. That is the only positive comment to be made. He can have the one star for his part in this creation.

This is my first review after listening to hundreds of books at Audible. I just finished it, so maybe I am little too charged up to be objective, but I feel I have wasted a lot of time and a credit trying to give this book a chance. Not being a big fan of the Horror genre, I was intrigued by the publisher's blurb and decided to give this book a shot, even though it was too new to have any reviews written about it. A little risky, but I thought, how bad could it be? At the very least it will be entertaining and something to while away a long commute. --I was mistaken. I did finish it, hoping for a satisfying end, and was, alas, even disappointed in that.

The book started out slowly, building the characters, but seemed to lack an in depth understanding of what makes a character truly compelling. The author’s descriptive ability is rudimentary at best. I never felt attached to any of the characters even as they were dying one by one. He did do a fair job of internal dialog, giving some insight to their actions but nothing was really outstanding here either, and I grew tired of “xxxx, knew what to say, but didn’t.” The plot was nearly laughable and anything but creepy or eerie. There were some definite gaping holes in the group’s feeble attempts to figure out their dilemma, and a general lack of demonstrated terror for what these people were facing. The characters were too one dimensional and lacked any real sense of desperation. They just moved from one disaster or realization to the next without any cognitive ability, resigned to their fate nearly from the beginning. Stupid, kept coming to mind for everything, the characters, the plot, the plant, the author. Is that too harsh?? Sorry, it’s just what kept going through my mind. Even the Myans seemed stupid in the story for their feeble attempts to keep people from their secret.

Proceed directly to "Go." Do not waste an audio book credit on this one. I downloaded "The Ruins" based on Stephen King's enthusiastic response to the print version.
By the time I finished the audio book I felt misled and disappointed. Misled because, unless I missed something, Mayan ruins had next to nothing to do with the content of the book. A more appropriate title would have been "The Plant"; however, that name probably would not have resulted in books leaping off store shelves. Or perhaps, the name could have been "The Hill" or "The Clearing" as most of the story takes place on a hill within a clearing in the jungle with no ruins in sight.
The other major flaw of the book is that it would have been better suited to a short story rather than a full-length book. There just isn't enough there to sustain your interest. I was expecting a previously undiscovered run down, jungle encrusted Mayan settlement with some mysterious malevolent presence protecting it and perhaps a treasure as well. Okay, so my plot is predictable, but with a few twists it would have worked better than what the author chose to do. The author should have had chosen a more complicated "villain" in order to sustain the suspense and crank up the fear.
As in "A Simple Plan" I thought the character development was good, even very good most of the time. I felt the characters acted the way most people of their age and background would have acted in the same situation. The character development was definitely much better than the author's attempts at creating fear and suspense. The tensions that developed between the characters as the novel progressed was credible.
Too bad because I really enjoyed the author's previous work "A Simple Plan."

There goes 14 hours of my life I will never get back!
I don't usually write reviews but felt I should warn others not to waste their money especially since "This is Audible" radio show has been touting this book again because it was released in paperback.

I purchased this audio book based primarily on the fact that Stephen King recommended it. Until now I have been happy to listen to almost any book while driving, but I'm now at approximately the half-way point and don't think I can keep on listening all the way to the end of this one. I find it particularly annoying that whereas the men portrayed in the book are courageous, inventive and intelligent; the women always think and act like three-year-old children.

This would have made a good and entertaining short story and possibly an OK teen horror movie but as a full novel it doesn't work. Rather than endearing you to any of the characters, the overly extensive characterisation just serves to bog down the story. Even ignoring the extent to which you are asked to suspend disbelief regarding the main events and activities I found myself not caring what happened to any of the characters but, rather, I found myself just grinding to the end of the story to finish it - vaguely hoping that some sort of explanation would be forthcoming.

Really enjoyed this book. It starts off a little slow, setting up the setting and the characters but it's still an interesting read. Then when the action starts it had me hooked. Can be quite gory and can be a difficult listen if you're squeamish! Excellent story and a fantastic ending, highly recommended. Competently read but you can tell it takes him a bit of time to get into it.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

I. Jamie

Le PecqFrance

8/7/06

Overall

"OK, but don't believe the glowing endorsements"

OK, they say never judge a book by it's cover, but I was somewhat swayed by the glowing endorsements (eg Stephen King) for this book. It's in the 'teenagers/twentysomethings' in peril genre and as far as it goes, it's ok. However, without giving too much of the plot away - the reasons underlying the peril are never adequately explained. I like my science fiction / horror to have at least a semi-tangible explanation (a la Michael Crichton for example). There are many aspects here that are just not explained, such as where the peril comes from and why the villagers behave as they do (don't think that gives too much away!). However, there is reasonably good tension developed between the characters, and it's not a bad listen - just not quite as great as the blurb would have you believe.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

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